Sartorial Rights

I don't normally pay much attention to clothes, but this is a human rights issue: Malaysian women everywhere should stand up for DJ Linda Onn's right to not wear an argly dress just because some idiots at Star TV want her to be more patriotic.

Even with a dearth of fashion sense (I'm a purple-T-shirt-and-grease-stained-jeans kind of girl) I can see that a beige-coloured sheer kebaya covered in stupid lace butterflies is not something one would wear while interviewing Hollywood stars at the Academy Awards...ew.

If you're too lazy to click on the link, here's the summary: Linda had worked with Jovian Mandagie, an Indonesian designer, for two weeks to come up with a "black and white modern baju kebaya" to wear while hosting Star TV's red carpet event at the Oscars. Some dumbass called Nini Yusof thought that her wearing a foreigner's rags was inappropriate and commissioned a local designer called Ridzuan Radziwill to come up with this:

Linda Onn was presented with the kebaya on landing in LA. They didn't offer her any other designs to choose from, and as stated above, it's a dem argly dress. Linda's more specific complaints were that it "did not fit her properly and was revealing" and it was "an unflattering “skin colour” ". But ultimately, Linda said that it was a matter of standing on her principles.

It's a matter of principle that surrounds the whole "Belilah Barangan Buatan Malaysia": why should we go for crap just because it's locally produced?

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Just to make it clear that I'm not contradicting myself, I don't want to return home out of some blind patriotism like that exhibited by the Star TV executives. I want to go home because there are still lots of good things about our country (ironically, most of which aren't publicized by the government or corporations, such as Manglish and 24-hour mamak stalls), and I want to FIX the crap.

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Generally speaking, I think the self-appointed arbiters of culture have very poor ideas of what women should wear. Who's the misogynistic nitwit who decided that primary school kids should wear dark navy pinafores, but then at the age when girls' reproductive systems start up, with all the attendant leakage and mortification, the uniform colour should switch to light turquoise, for girls only?